Talk:Out of My Head/@comment-25320855-20140705072733/@comment-3575890-20140705083059
This is very well written, Catie. <3 Given that I just wrote about this right down to bringing Rapunzel and Sansa into the mix though (are our minds twinning or what? Lol), and I'm turning in for the night so I don't have the time to construct an intelligible reply to this, I'll just copy and paste what I've already said. Please do not take this to mean that I am trying to undermine your points. They are all valid and well articulated. This is just my own personal two cents on the matter and in addition, an attempt at clearing up whatever misconceptions may have arisen. In advance, sorry for being such a lazy bitch. XD This essay really does deserve better than a recycled response, but well, I'm all ranted out, lol: My issue with original Snow and Aurora isn't that they aren't fearsome sword-wielding warriors. It's that they are vapid and lack very little personality. It is clear that more effort was actually put into their physical character designs, in other words, more precedence put on how they look, than into their character personas. I understand that both Snow and Aurora are victims of circumstance, and products of their upbringing but that doesn't in any way excuse them being such flat, one-dimensional characters. Rapunzel is a great example. She's been alone all of her life as well, has been subjected to unspeakable emotional abuse, but she has flaws, defining characteristics, and is written with clear intent to be perceived as more than just a pretty face. Perhaps, now that you mentioned it, there is an understandable psychology that explains Aurora's and Snow's actions, but my issue isn't just with how they act. It's how they're written. It's how they lack depth, qualities that make them more than just pretty cardboard cutouts, and how they were created with the intent to set the standard for women to be seen as weak, appreciable only on the principle of physical beauty, and reduced to depthless male-fantasized cliches. I would like to make myself very clear here because I feel some people have misconstrued me. I do NOT automatically hate traditionally feminine female characters. Hello, I LOVE Sansa Stark, but that is because I have a firm understanding of her psychology, and unlike the aforementioned Disney princesses, Sansa has actual depth and a point of view. The sweet, timid, ingenue we see in the beginning just barely scrapes the surface of who she is. She is shrewd, strong of mind, observant, mentally and emotionally resilient, and a true survivalist. She isn't independent in the sense that her sister is, but she IS self-sufficient. I resent even comparing my homegirl Sansa to Snow and Aurora because Sansa has complexity. She has layers and qualities that are humanizing. Case in point; she is actually believable as a human being. Aurora and Snow, besides being sweet and naive....what else is there to really say? They were never fleshed out beyond that. My main issue with Aurora and Snow is that they are portrayed as utterly perfect. They have virtually no flaws whatsoever and their immaculate Mary Sue-ness is glamorized out the wazoo. This contributes to an already existent problematic phenomenon that affects females all across the globe incited in crippling pressures to be perfect. Females are pressured to live up to unattainable standards even today, and characters like Snow and Aurora, whom are portrayed as inhumanly perfect and reduced to sexist cliches that little girls are taught to look up to lends to this problem.